Dead Space:  Trio
by X-WolfHunter
Summary: A miner/human trafficker named Terrance is blown off course and into an asteroid by the USM Forrest.  His only hope of survival is to travel via an escape pod to The Sprawl.  But what he finds there is a nightmare beyond all nightmares.
1. Prologue

My name is Terrance.

And I am the sole survivor of the UMA_ Spearhead_'s crash near Titan Station.

We were on our way to dock at the Titan Station to restock our supplies before continuing on to the asteroid belt to mine for silver and iron, and deliver our human cargo to another ship. But then things went horribly wrong. We were ambushed by the USM _Forrest_, who somehow knew of our hidden cargo. Our mining frigate was no match for their Destroyer-class vessel; they took out our engines and left us on a collision course with an asteroid. They wanted it to look like an accident, so the United Miner's Association would not retaliate.

So we crashed. Three of us lived past the initial collision, but one was fatally injured, crushed by a fallen chunk of wall, and the other one of our "traffickees" without a RIG. The first one died a painful death, the second one got sucked into space while trying to kill me.

So it was just me. The _Forrest_ was coming back to scan the wreckage for survivors, so I knew I had to get to The Sprawl if I were to survive.

I managed to jettison five undamaged escape pods in different directions. They chased after the wrong one, and I crash-landed on Titan Station a few days later.

I should have stayed on the asteroid. I should have let them kill me. I was met with a horrifying scene as soon as I entered the colony.

The dead walked. Not only did they walk - They killed. With a vengeance. An unheard-of aggression flowed through them. They infected others by the most painfully gruesome means you could imagine. And I was next on their list to consume and transform.

Sorry for the dramatic introduction. I wanted to make an impression, because, in all honesty, my life has taken a turn: Into a shit-filled hellhole. Ever since I landed on Titan Station, I've been looking for a way off it, by any means necessary. Only one thing is keeping me going through this: My refusal to become one of _them_.

So this is my story. The story of a survivor. I hope you know what you're about to read, because it ain't pretty.

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><p><strong>Hi, it's the author here. I know, I know, the name of the series sucks. No need for any comments as such.<strong>

**All I have is this to say: The story will be five chapters (Plus the prologue) long. I also have two other one-chapter stories planned that will elaborate on the first four days Terrance spent on The Sprawl, and what happens after Ch. 5 ends. If you guys like the story a lot (Which is dubious), then I may plan on making another series that involves Terrance et crew.**

**Hope you enjoy! X-WolfHunter**


	2. Chapter 1

Day Five:

I know, I skipped the first four days. But you wouldn't be interested in them anyway. Nothing really happened. I found some necromorphs, shot some necromorphs, and shit myself a _lot_. It was a scary first few days. But now I've got the hang of it.

So let me set the scene for you before I continue on.

I'm all curled up in a corner, counting my ammo, and planning my next move. I'm in a sealed-off room with a hidden exit. A couple of necromorphs are trying to get in, but they're not gonna. Even if they did, I'd be waiting for them.

There are a couple of bodies in the room I'm in, and they don't look fresh. I'm glad my RIG came with an air filter so I don't have to smell them.

My options are simple. My main goal, the one I'm doing all my planning to reach, is to leave this horrid place. I need to get off Titan Station and put all this behind me, maybe live in isolation.

But I can't just waltz to the nearest bay and hop on a transport shuttle. No, there's no way that's going to happen. It's not possible. I need to plan out every step, every breath if I want to live.

So I've got a dilemma: Should I just try and find an operable shuttle and get the hell off this place, or should I find a store and upgrade my stuff first, giving me a better chance at survival?

If I go to the store, my journey will be that much longer and I'll have to stay that much more.

But if I go to a shuttle, I might not have enough firepower and defenses to make it.

I'd been debating that problem, endlessly, in my head for the day that I'd been in that sealed-off room, listening to the necromorphs pounding ceaselessly on the door that I welded shut with my plasma cutter. I hadn't really come to any good conclusion yet. I knew I had to get out of the room before the more powerful necromorphs came a-knockin' and busted the door in. But I also knew I needed a plan before I did so, or I might trip up.

So what would it be?

I sat there for another hour before deciding that I'd find a store first, before things got any worse. I stood up and walked to the only access hatch in the room. It led right outside. I would have to kill the necromorphs who were trying to get in, of course, but it was my only option. So I waved my hand in front of it.

It normally wouldn't open for anyone but certified engineers, but I had installed a state-of-the-art hacking chip in my right hand months ago that would unlock all but the most advanced doors. It came in handy in my rather dirty profession - in case you couldn't tell already, I was . . . not exactly a clean man. So it opened, and I hauled myself in. I crawled down the cramped space and came to the hatch at the other end. Taking a deep breath, I opened it and propelled myself out as fast as I could, raising my line gun as I did so. The necromorphs halted in what they were doing and stared at me as though wondering who would be stupid enough to launch themselves right in front of a necromorph.

I didn't waste any time. I aimed at the closest one, the holographic blue line projected from my gun wavering right where its legs connected to its abdomen. One trigger pull later, and the first one was missing its legs. I did the same to the second one before switching to my more accurate, less powerful plasma cutter to slice their excessively long and sharp arms off. Four quick bursts later, there were two dead necromorphs at my feet. I quickly reloaded both my weapons before heading down the hallway in the direction that I figured might take me to a store.

For the next half hour or so, I walked. And walked. And walked some more. The hallway seemed endless, with hundreds of rooms and other hallways branching off of it. I should've taken the time a while back to install the maps of Titan Station into my RIG; it would've made things that much easier to do. But I hadn't, so I was stuck to wandering the necromorph-infested hallways trying to find a stupidly elusive store. Why couldn't they make them closer to each other, and why couldn't they at least hang up signs pointing in the general direction of one?

As I walked, I alternated between thinking about what I'd do when I found a store, and what I'd do after that. I decided that I'd just refill my ammo, healing packs, stasis modules, and air supply canisters. If there was a bench nearby, I'd weld my copious power nodes - all of them - to my weapons and RIG. Then I'd search for a main terminal, where I could get maps of the Titan Station for my RIG. I would also be able to access the cameras and data of certain bays to find an operable shuttle, and make my way to it.

I was something of a computer hacker back before I hopped in my fated escape pod to The Sprawl, so a main terminal wouldn't pose too much trouble to me when I found it.

As I was walking along, absorbed in my thoughts, I suddenly heard . . . Human yells? I hadn't encountered a single other survivor in my five days here. So I hurried to find the yells' source. I turned a corner in the hallway and found a gigantic factory bay that had three other, smaller rooms on each of its three walls. The rooms had one glass wall, one door, and an access hatch each. As I watched, an unarmored man, chased by a group of necromorphs, sprinted to the room on the far side of the factory and opened the door. He closed it almost before he got in, nearly crushing himself in the process, and then pumped some plasma into the door's control panel on the inside. Immediately, the blue holographic circle turned orange and began flickering, a sure sign that the door wasn't opening unless it got fixed. But that wasn't enough for the man. He changed the settings on his plasma cutter to "weld" mode and disappeared behind the door. I couldn't see him anymore, but I saw the white, splattering light that was the result of welding come under the door.

After a few minutes, the door was welded shut. The man went back to the glass window and stared at the necromorphs who were frenzying at the door. The man grinned, secure in his safety, knowing they could not break the door. But then one of the necromorphs saw him at the window and launched itself at him. The man jumped back as the necromorph crashed into the window and left a disgusting slimy ooze behind. The man stared at the window in horror. I looked at it too. He was scared of the ooze? But then I saw what he was so terrified about: A crack, small, but a crack nonetheless, had appeared in the window. The rest of the necromorphs followed suit, and soon there was a spiderweb of cracks in the window. I knew I had to do something or the man would become one of them, and then I'd have to kill one more necromorph than the group outside the window. So I raised my line gun and took out the legs of one - two - three necromorphs before they noticed me. I stood my ground and de-legged all of them in quick succession. I switched, once again, to my plasma cutter and began de-limbing them, but as they got closer and closer to me I wondered if I shouldn't have just kept on moving.

But then the glass window shattered and the man, holding his smoking plasma cutter, jumped out of it and began firing with astonishing accuracy, taking out the remainder of the group of necromorphs. He then raised his plasma cutter to my face as I did his. We stood like this for a while, neither of us wanting to shoot the only other survivor we had met thus far. And then I called out to him: "Let's put our weapons down and go in one of those rooms. It'll be safer in there."

He nodded and lowered his plasma cutter. I did the same. We walked into one of the other rooms and locked the door behind us.

"We can always get out through the access hatch." I said. He nodded.

"So, who are you?" He asked.

"No. First, who are you? I just saved your skin, I deserve to know first." I replied.

"Fair enough," He shrugged. "I am - or was - a marine engineer. My name - or what you should call me - is Gunner. I was, as you can probably tell, a pretty good shot. Heck, I still am."

"And my name is Terrance. I was a miner. But I was also a . . . high risk trader, if you understand my meaning." I replied. "But let's put our pasts behind us and focus on the situation at hand. You don't have a RIG. I can help you find a store, if you can help me find a main terminal."

"What do you want do do with a terminal?" Gunner replied.

"Well, for one, I want to download a map of The Sprawl so I can tell where I'm going. For two, I want to use its access to the main computer system to pull up images and information on various docking bays so I can find an operable shuttle and get the hell off of here."

"Well then . . . You've got a deal. We'll stick together until we find an operable shuttle." Said Gunner, holding out his hand.

"You won't get off this place with me?" I asked as I grasped his proffered hand. He shook his head.

"I've lived here all my life. The only time I left the place was to go on a short mission to one of the asteroids to destroy it, because it was on a crash course with The Sprawl.

"So it's fitting that I stay here to die, don't you think?" Gunner said with a sad look in his eyes.

"The only way you're going to die is by being mauled to death by one of those things." I tried to convince him to leave with me, but he refused. Finally, I sighed and gave up. "Well, we're safe enough here. Might as well get some sleep." I walked to the room's control computer and hit a few commands. The lights flickered out.

"Good night." Said Gunner as he tried to find a comfortable position in the dark.

"It's ten in the morning." I replied, grinning to myself. "But good night all the same."

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><p><strong>Hey, guys, X-WolfHunter here. I hope you enjoyed the first installment in what I hope will be a successful Dead Space FanFiction.<strong>

**I suppose I should make a disclaimer at this point in time, that has to do with me not owning anything that pertains to Dead Space. Well, here goes: I do not own anything that pertains to Dead Space (Except Terrance, Gunner, Titan [spoiler], and any weapons that I may or may not make up in the duration of this series). *Exhales* That wasn't so hard, was it?**

**Read, Share, Review, Repeat. That's my motto! Well, when it comes to other people reading my stories, that is. Good night.**

**Oh, one last thing: I should be, hopefully, adding a new chapter a week. That also includes the two follow-up short stories, "Dead Space: Trio - The First Four Days" and "Dead Space: Trio - What Happens Next."**

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><p><strong><em>I'm back, revisiting this chapter and the last one to add something. Thing one: The two follow-ups are not named as such. Dead Space: Trio - The First Four Days is not written by me. It's written by someone named Rafen of the Blood. Just search him. You'll find it. Also, "D<strong>ead Space: Trio - What Happens Next<strong>" is now called "Dead Space: Bridge" instead. The collab will be out soon as well - within a week from today (3/31/12) is my estimate._  
><strong>


	3. Chapter 2

**Hey, all, it's me, X-WolfHunter again. I just want to let you know, so you don't get confused: This story changes viewpoints often. It's somewhat confusing, but I'll be notifying you of the changes as we go along.**

**This is because the story was written by Terrance through a combination of journal logs, post-event recaps, and live audio logs. I'll be letting you know which is which, so bear with me.**

**The prologue and chapter 1 were, obviously, post-event recaps (Meaning they were written after Terrance escaped The Sprawl) (I bet you couldn't have guessed that he escaped successfully . . .). However, this chapter is a combo of a journal log and a live audio stream translated to text. From here on out, it's journal, until the next AN (Author's note, for you _slow _people :) in which I will notify you of the change to live audio.**

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><p>Day 7:<p>

I lost Gunner.

We had left the room that evening after a seven hour nap. Gunner knew the area pretty well, and he thought he had a hunch as to where we could find a store. We came to a defunct train station that had a bunch of . . . things attached to the ground. Gunner called them Cysts. According to him, if you got too close, they launched an organic bomb into the air.

We had begun to pick our way through the hellish spawn, but we suddenly realized that there may have been others out there, like us, but who didn't know about the Cysts' landmine-like properties.

So we had begun safely removing them by chucking random scraps of metal and other such things at the blobs of evil. They responded by committing suicide in a very gory way, which had made me, if not Gunner, flinch every time.

But then we had heard screams. They had been decidedly _not_ human. Gunner had told me that they were "Packs," toddlers who had been changed into necromorphs. He had said that they were extremely dangerous, and traveled in packs, hence the name. I had begun to feel real fear at that point as the screams grew closer, and we knew they were heading for us. We had readied our weapons, moved to strategic positions to choke them into a single area . . . But all of our planning failed as they ignored our plasma blasts and shrugged off lost arms. We shot and shot - in fact, the Cysts seemed not to discriminate either, blasting away a good portion of the Packs. But in the end, it was too much. Gunner, somewhat defenseless without a RIG, had to run while I held the Packs off as long as I could. Eventually, however, even I had to flee.

So we were separated. Lost. I had no idea where I was going, and no idea where Gunner was.

An hour of random wandering later, and I had received a small portion of map from Gunner that included a marked spot which was where we were to meet up at. He had also included a small bit of text that said that he was moving there as fast as he could.

A day later, and here I am, writing this in my RIG's computer log. I had to take a short break (I get tired too, you know) to rest up, drink up, eat up, use the bathroom (It happens in space too), and write this log. But I'm done with all that. So I'm going to start to record my journey with audio, which, if I make it through all this, I will translate to text. So here I go!

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><p><strong>AN: Yeah. I know it's obvious. But I said I would, so . . . Yeah. Here on out = audio log. Happy? No? Good.<strong>

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><p>Okay. Is this thing working? *Bmphh* Yep. Good. It's Terrance here, and I'm recording this part of my journey using audio. I don't know why I've decided to archive my story, but I figure it might help out other people who are in similar situations. I don't know if that's possible, but I'm doing it all the same.<p>

Alright. I'm leaving the room I rested in. The hallways look clear, so here I go. I'm taking a left.

By the way, I turned my helmet's external audio off, so for anyone out there who's confused as to why I'm shouting my head off and giving my position away, nobody can hear me outside my helmet. Hope that clears a few things off.

*Muffled footsteps*

I still don't see anything. It's just a hallway. It goes on and on. The gray metal is so . . . bland. Which is why, of course, the necromorphs have decorated it lively-like with human blood. It adds a nice homey feeling to the pl -

*CRASH*

SHIT! *Plasma cutter shots* That thing scared the shit out of me. What the hell are they doing in the air vents? How can they be that smart? God.

Where too now? Hmm . . . Here, let me activate my "holo-map" thing. It's a useful feature. *Blip*

What the . . . I'm supposed to go _through _the air vents? Why, Gunner? Why? I think he's just fucking with me. Seriously.

Okay, I'm going in. It's dark in here. I'll just turn my helmet's flashlight on . . . *Click* That's better. Oh . . . It's real gory in here. Blood everywhere. There's something . . . Growing on the walls, too. It looks kinda like human entrails just smeared across the entire wall. I wonder what it is? It looks . . . Slimy. *Splearch* Ooh . . . God, it is slimy. And slippery, too. It's like some fleshy plant is growing in here. Nasty.

Okay . . . I've been walking for five minutes now, and I haven't seen anything yet. Just more twists, turns, and vents that open into hallways. I've only encountered three of the things in here so far - the regular kind, with the slashy arms. Hell, that's what I'll call them. Slashers. Seems to fit them pretty well.

Gotta keep on trucking, keep on moving, keep on walking. Oh? What's this? There are lights that I can see through the vent on my right. Blue lights. Is that . . . A store? No way. It is! Amazing! I can't believe it! *Whoops* That's . . . brilliant. Okay, I'll open the vent. Hang on. *Fshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh* There. That should do it. *Clang!* I hope that wan't too loud.

Yep. That's a store alright. And . . . What? A bench, too? This is my lucky day. I'd better upgrade my stuff.

Okay. Store first. I'll just refill my ammo, stasis modules, healing packs, and air canisters. There. That's all I need. Now to the bench.

I'll just upgrade my RIG and my . . . let's see . . . I'll . . . upgrade the strength of the nano-weaves on my suit to make it stronger. There. Let's see you necromorphs try and break through that!

*Screeeeam*

I didn't mean it! Shit! *Line gun shot* that'll teach you. I think I'll upgrade my weapons too, but quickly, before more of them come.

There. That's all fixed. Is this place on that map that Gunner sent me?

Yep. Sweet. Now I'll mark it on the map, and . . . Perfect. Done. We'll swing back here after I pick up Gunner.

Okay, then. Back to the vents.

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><p><strong>I know, I know, horrible ending to a chapter. Sorry. It happens. I'll make up for it next chapter. Okay? I <em>promise<em>.**

**And I know I said this chapter would be longer. It seemed like it was pretty long on my word processing program, but it somehow shrunk in the process of transferring it to the web. Ah, well. Also, the chapter served its purpose, and anything else I could add to it would be fluff and boring. Don't worry, next chapter will be a hell of a lot more exciting than this one. This one was kinda a bridge or something. And the chapters WILL get longer - waaay longer - as the time goes on. Especially chapter five. I may have to break that one up into sections. Like, seriously. It's gonna be crazy-long.  
><strong>

**Read, share, review, repeat. Or something like that. I forget what I said last chapter.**

**Oh, and, what do you think about the whole "shifting perspectives?" Honestly, whatever you say won't actually change anything and the story will still be the same, but it's nice to know what your readers think.**

**Adios.**


	4. Chapter 3

**Hello all, and welcome to another chapter of Dead Space: Trio! Just as promised, this chapter is a bit longer than the other two. Hope you enjoy! Oh, and, the first section, until stated otherwise, is post-event recap. Just so you know.**

**Note: I edited the story a teensie-weensie bit to fix some mistakes. Don't get apoplexy over it.  
><strong>

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><p>I wandered through those vents for hours, fearing that Gunner's directions were somehow off, or that his map or my holo-projector was glitchy. There were so many branches in direction, so many exits to the vents, but the holographic line never wavered, keeping me on a steady course. This did little to quench my fears, however, as necromorphs were as abundant as the myriad twists and turns. It seemed as though I had discovered the necromorphs' transportation system; how they got around so sneakily and managed to ambush so many poor uninfected humans.<p>

But the whole "ambush" thing was wasted on me; it's not like they hid by the entrances to the vents and waited for unsuspecting humans to wander through them. So for the most part I had an advantage over the Slashers I encountered, as they were watching for people to walk by the vents to jump out at them; they never saw me coming. It was no big thing to deal with them as I came across them, but my ammo supplies were ever-dwindling, and with the store far behind me, I knew I had to keep careful count of my ammo and ration it appropriately. Every time I saw a necromorph, I came as close as I could to it without it noticing me before taking careful aim and killing them in as close to four shots as possible: One for each of their limbs, just to make sure they were dead.

The reason I always made sure they were dead was because of the most terrifying experience I had in the entirety of my brief stay on The Sprawl: I had shot the leg off of a Slasher, and it fell and lay still. Satisfied of its death, I continued on my merry way until I came level with it. Then, it jumped right off of the ground and pulled me down. I fought it for five minutes before I managed to blast it off me with my plasma cutter. Then it was a simple matter to cleave it in half with my line gun and remove its other limbs with my plasma cutter.

However, after that incident, I never left a necromorph with any limbs left on it, and approached any necromorph that did have a limb or two still remaining with great caution.

So I traveled on my most alone and fearful journey ever through those vents until finally, blissfully, the holographic line told me to get out. I cut my way through the indicated vent and got out. I was in a dark room with virtually no lighting in it. Pleasant. So I simply turned my own lights on and hoped for the best. I followed the little glowing blue light on the ground for another ten minutes before I finally came to a lit area, without incident. Once there, it was a simple matter to traverse the bright hallways, easily avoiding any Slashers I saw. I was only forced to kill three of the things before I finally reached a giant metal door. I checked my holographic map, and saw that the checkpoint was literally on the other side of the hunk of metal that refused to open; instead of the unlocked blue holographic circle that usually resided in front of doors, or even the yellow-orange that indicated that it was locked, which I could hack, this one had a red flickering circle which meant that it hadn't the power necessary to open itself; no amount of hacking, computer-fiddling, or trickery could open that door now. Only high explosives or a battery could. But where could I find a battery?

I looked around, but all I saw was a discarded, glowing-red battery that meant it was dead, halfway across the room. I then walked around the room in its entirety, looking for a battery, but saw none. I was about to give up and try and find another way through, when I saw a beautifully glowing blue battery - residing twenty feet in the air on a small catwalk with a, you guessed it, dead door the only way to conveniently reach it. I tried using telekinesis to move it down, but there was no good way to reach it and it eluded my grasp. For the next ten minutes, I tried hurling various objects with kinesis to try and knock it down, but to no avail. How could I get it down? Then I saw my solution: A detonator, with three mines, simply laying on the ground next to me. I grinned and picked them up, loading the gun with ease; I had used these before. I had three shots to hit my exact target or I would fail. So I took extremely careful aim.

But guess who decided to show up at that exact moment? Right. My little friend Slasher did.

I had no time to get out my plasma cutter, so I simply fired the first mine at the Slasher's feet and hit "explodify" on my gun. The Slasher's guts went everywhere - and I mean _everywhere. _Blood and unknown excrements splashed all over my face visor. I cursed, as I couldn't see, but my RIG was a mining RIG, and so well-equipped to deal with the situation. With a quick flash of superheated light, my visor was perfectly clear again.

Now I only had two shots. I raised my detonator, eager to hurry up before another Slasher came a-calling. I peered down the sights and took careful notice of where the holographic blue aiming-light ended up. When I was satisfied, I squeezed the trigger and watched my only hope of reaching Gunner sail through the air - and land right where I wanted it: The underside of the catwalk, close enough to the wall so that the battery would be unaffected, but far enough away that the wall couldn't absorb any of the explosive power of the mine.

I hit "explodify" once more and watched as glowing-white chunks of metal twisted away from the mine and the catwalk sagged on molten supports until the battery slipped off the platform and landed in my outstretched arms. The only thought in my head as the battery landed in my grasp was "_Damn that was a bad idea_" as my arms nearly popped out of their sockets. I dropped the battery and rubbed my sore arms. Even with my RIG's added strength, the battery was just too heavy for me to lift. So I hefted it with kinesis and slid it into its slot next to the door. Why I hadn't caught it with kinesis originally, I don't know.

The red flickering light turned blue as the battery was pulled into the slot by some mechanical motor. I passed my hand through the blue circle and waited with baited breath as it slowly ground open. When it had fully opened, I saw Gunner.

But I saw something else as well. A gigantic brute of a necromorph was chasing him around. I wanted to rush in to help, but he was on the level above me, and the lift that would bring me up didn't even have a holographic circle, which was decidedly not good. I opened up a transmission link with Gunner and screamed, "How do I get to you?" at the top of my lungs.

"Fix the lift!" Was his reply.

"How do I do that?" I asked.

"I'll guide you through it!"

And guide me through it he did, even as he dodged and wove through the brute's charges and blows. I had to open up a panel, reconnect two wires, weld some metal to some other metal, replace a broken part with something lying on the ground (I just had to get up to Gunner, not make it permanently functional), and then reseal the panel. When I had done all that, I sighed in relief as the familiar blue holo-circle flickered to life in front of me and I got on the small lift. It raised me almost all the way until sparks flew from the panel I had so diligently tried to repair and the lift shuddered to a halt. It hissed and slowly began to descend once more. I cursed and reached up, jumping as high as I could, barely grabbing the ledge to the floor with my fingertips. After a few seconds of struggling, I managed to pull myself up onto Gunner's level. I looked down and saw that the lift was in the exact same position that it was when I had come to it. Gunner gave a yell and I saw that he was cornered - in a corner. Oh, the irony. I cursed and fired three plasma shots at the thing to get its attention. I switched to my line gun and aimed carefully at the brute's knees. I planned to bring it down so I could remove its limbs. I fired the shot, and it hit exactly where I aimed it. The brute merely stumbled, but then kept charging. Panicking, I fired five more shots before the lower portion of the thing's leg came free and the beast fell. I hurriedly removed its other leg so it couldn't stand back up, but it was unfazed and began crawling using only its arms at me. Gunner fired off a few shots at its elbow, and though all of them managed somehow to hit exactly the moving joint, it had no visible effect. So I had to slowly and meticulously remove both its arms, wasting lots of perfectly good line gun ammo in the process, until it could no longer move. While it was still very much alive, it posed no threat to anyone any longer. It wiggled its torso a bit and gnashed its teeth, but to no effect. Gunner and I grasped forearms and congratulated each other on our victory and made our way to the hole in the floor where the lift should have been.

"Now what are we going to do?" I asked. But then the brute let out a low, rumbling wail that vibrated my helmet. Gunner clasped his ears in pain. When the yell was finished, we could both hear necromorphs screaming nearby.

"Shit!" Gunner cried out.

"Now what? How do we get down there?" I yelled back.

"Why the hell would we want to go down there? Let's just run!"

"Because I found a store and a bench! You need a RIG. You're nearly defenseless as-is, and there's no way you can survive without one. Who knows when we'll be forced into space or a window breaks?"

Gunner nodded. "We'll need to get the lift up here somehow. When it's here, we can get on it and it'll descend slowly."

"Kinesis!" I shouted. "Do you have kinesis?" Gunner nodded. We both readied our modules and then lifted with all of our strength. We could hear the necromorphs running closer and closer, their screams growing louder and louder with each passing second. The lift rose slowly - too slowly.

"We can't let go of it to fight them off or it'll go back down!" Gunner shouted. "One man's kinesis alone is too weak to lift it by itself."

"Then it's do or die. There are too many to fight off. We need to get down there." I replied, surprisingly calmly. The chances of it all ending here were high, but I wasn't angry or sad or guilty or anything. I simply watched the lift rise. It was about halfway up by that point, and the necromorphs were extremely close. I didn't turn around, though. I simply stared at the lift as is rose higher and higher. It was slightly closer now . . . A bit closer . . . Almost three quarters of the way . . . And then the necromorphs appeared. Gunner screamed "Jump!" and we did. The lift immediately began to descend. The fall was about fifteen feet in total. My RIG absorbed the landing for the most part, and I was only a little bit dazed by the fall. I looked up and saw necromorphs surrounding the hole we had jumped through. A few of them fell, but they missed the lift and landed on the ground nearly thirty feet below. I looked down at a couple of them, and all I saw were pools of blood and chunks of flesh where they had landed. Thank God for that.

"We did it, Gunner!" I shouted to him. When I turned to him, however, he was curled up in the lift, gripping his right ankle, his face white.

"I think I broke it!" He gasped. I cursed.

"Can you stand?" I asked. He shook his head. "Damn it. What can we do?"

"Get to the store. The RIG has a support system that will let me walk." He said, his teeth clenched. I nodded.

The lift finally descended to the floor far below and we got off. I looked up and saw dozens of frenzied necromorphs staring at us with hunger and longing in their eyes. I turned back around and hefted Gunner up so he didn't put any weight on his ankle.

"Here we go." I said.

We managed to make it to the store in one piece. We encountered few necromorphs, and I only had to let Gunner down twice, both occasions when we had been unsuccessful to sneak up on a necromorph. Both times, he had cussed and yelled and made a general racket.

"Oh, shut up. You'll live." Was my reply the second time he did this.

"That's the thing, though! I might not!"

"Well . . . shit, you're right." I shut my mouth after that.

When we arrived at the store, I hefted/pushed Gunner into the seat in the store after he had hastily punched in his ID code and selected his Advanced Sniping RIG.

After the store put his suit on him, the door hissed open and he stepped out, his right leg immobilized from the knee down by a small metal plate that was fused on.

"I have some good news and some bad news," He said. "The good news is that my ankle will only take a couple of hours to heal, because I only sprained it. My RIG injected a numbing agent that will last as long as I need it to and a small med kit that'll make me right as rain in a few hours.

"The bad news, however, is that for the duration of time where my ankle is still injured, I can't run or my ankle might get _really_ messed up. You know how med kits work. You can't screw with the area being healed or you'll totally be frigged. So we've gotta take it easy 'till I'm fully healed."

"Sounds reasonable. Where to now?" I replied easily. He shrugged.

"You're the boss. I'm only paying off my debts to you. Before we do anything, though, here are the maps to the Titan Station." He hit a few buttons on a small projected holographic screen, and a notice popped up in my helmet that notified me of the addition of the maps.

Normally, that would be highly illegal, but nobody else was alive to give a shit about it. So we didn't care either. And off we went.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Switching to journal entry mode<strong>

* * *

><p>Day Seven. Or is it Day Eight?<p>

No. It's Day Seven. It's late, though.

I just realized I've been awake for twenty hours straight. How I've managed this I'll never know, but I'm sure it has to do with the ever-pumping adrenaline of an apocalyptic nightmare. I need sleep, and soon, but there's something Gunner and I have to accomplish first.

Gunner and I were walking to the very docking bay I'm writing this log in, to "find something" he needed. He wouldn't tell me what it was, only that it of vital importance and would greatly improve our chances of survival.

After a heated argument with Gunner via comlink (We didn't want any necromorphs to hear our yells), I finally agreed to go to it.

The docking bay had been Gunner's station, where he repaired damaged USM ships from battle. Occasionally he saw hear, as sometimes hijacked USM ships docked there to sabotage/wreak havoc, but for the most part it was a peaceful station.

He told me, in our argument, that there was something there that was used against such hijackers, something that ended the fights quicker than they could start. He called it a "superweapon," and that he'd wanted it to be a surprise for me for saving him twice.

As I was saying before that quick rant, we were walking to the bay when we felt a tremendous rumble. My first thought was that the behemoth had followed us, but Gunner dismissed that theory as ridiculous; he had heard the sound twice before: Once, when The Sprawl had taken a direct hit from a rogue ship's weapon system, and the other time when a ship had crashed on The Sprawl. He said that he thought it was the latter. He also said we could check it out from the docking bay we were about to reach.

So we went to the docking be with a renewed vigor and sealed off the doors when we got there. We grabbed some air packs that we attached to the backs of our RIGs (Every docking bay had multiple twelve-hour air packs for in-space missions) and went out into space. What we saw was shocking. Lying there, not two miles from The Sprawl, was a crumpled heap of metal and glowing blue lights. It was huge, but nothing like Titan Station. Gunner could tell she a USM ship by its make, but we couldn't identify her properly until we got closer, where I saw, in big, plain white letters, on the side of the heap of wreckage, clearer than day: USM _Forrest_. I hid my shock from Gunner - he still doesn't know of my "history" with the _Forrest_ - and we returned to the docking bay to refill our air packs.

That's where I am now, writing this log quickly before we go back out to check the wreckage for survivors and get the data logs from the ship so we can see what happened to it. I'll write another log once we do so to fill in what we find and archive it.

As soon as we're done with this, though, I'm gonna hit the hay. And not stop hitting it for at _least_ the next twelve hours straight; the docking bay we're in is pretty darn well sealed off.

* * *

><p><strong>Well. Another chapter of <span>Dead Space: Trio<span> has gone by. Can you believe it? Yeah, me too. Not that impressive.**

**Anywho, I would greatly appreciate any reviews, good or bad, you might happen to throw my way. Like, seriously, I _need_ reviews. They are my sustenance. I eat them. They feed my eternal hunger. This is why I write: An excessive need for other people's opinions.**

**None of that was true, by the way. I hope you know that.**

**Read, Share, Review, Repeat. I got it right this time (Last chapter, I forgot to capitalize Share-Repeat)**

**Okay. Peace out, home-spice-dawgs. X-Wolf out.**


	5. Chapter 4

**Welcome one, welcome all, to DEAD SPACE TRIO CHAPTER FOUR! It's been a long time in the coming, I know . . . Sorry about that, devoted fans.**

**Aaanywho, we're going to start off the show with a little bit of audio log-ness, so sit tight and hold on to your plasma cutters.**

* * *

><p>Well, here we are.<p>

Gunnar and I are standing here in the docking bay with our air packs attached and fully functional. The door's closed, but Gunner's walking over to open it.

There it goes. Grinding into the walls . . . Damn, it's loud.

There's space. It's so dark out there. Look at the stars, too. Wow. You can't see them, of course, but they're amazing all the same. Way better than the stars you can see anywhere on Earth, even on the darkest days.

Off we go. We're jumping out now. Gunner's remotely closing the door . . . It's shut now. We're jetting to the wreck of the _Forrest _now. Gunner thinks it'll take us about ten minutes to reach it.

. . .

We're here. Nothing much to see. Some sparks, a few flickering lights . . . But no signs of life. Gunner's doing a crude scanning of the wreck, but it looks like he's not picking up anything.

Nope. Nothing.

He just told me to go back and wait while he picks up the ship's data log. He said that the door's opening now for me.

Okay, I'm heading back now.

*Ten minutes later*

I'm almost there. Aand . . . There. I'm back.

*Muffled footsteps*

Alright, I'm shutting the door now.

Hang on . . . I'm getting something. A video transmission from Gunner.

*Fshk . . . Terrance, you hear me?*

Yeah, I do.

*Good. Listen, I found somebody. He's badly injured, so I'm bringing him back now. Maybe we'll go back later for the data, but he needs medical treatment _now_.*

Okay. What do you want me to do?

*Make sure the docking bay is secure. Find any medical supplies you can and consolidate them. I'll let you know when I need you to open the doors.*

Sounds good. I'll get right on that.

*Fshk*

Wow, another survivor. That's good, right? He might just up and kill me . . . Nah, he doesn't know who I am. Okay, I'm making the rounds of the docking bay to make sure all the doors are sealed and nothing's gotten in.

I wonder if he'll be okay? I don't know where the closest medical bay is. Hopefully he'll make it; he's bound to have some kind of combat training if he was stationed on a destroyer-class vessel.

Okay, done making rounds. Nothing here. Now to find some medical supplies . . .

That's a pretty good stack. Now I've just got to wait for Gunner's call.

Until then, though, I might as well keep talking, to keep myself occupied and make sure that the audio log isn't too quiet.

Hmm . . . I know: What will I do when, or if, I get out of this whole mess? Well, let's see. I think I'll definitely have to purchase a ship of my own - a luxury cruiser. Definitely. Maybe I'll even set up a station on a far-off asteroid in some other start system. And I'll get some servants, a nice fleet of ships, maybe even some armed guards . . . And a wife. I definitely need a wife. Or a few whores . . . Ha ha. No, definitely a wife. Oh, wait - Gunner's calling.

Yes?

*I'm almost at the bay doors. Open them up.*

No problem. How's the survivor looking?

*He's unconscious. He has a huge gash in his arm from a sheet of metal plating that must've gone flying at impact. He's lost a lot of blood. I've rigged up a perma-stasis on his arm, but we need some synth-blood and a few medical kits. Have you got that?*

Yeah. I'm opening the door now.

The medical supplies I found should be able to patch him up.

*Good. I'll be in soon.*

You'd better be.

*Fshk*

Okay . . .What to do, what to do . . . How about I'll go look for Gunner? See if I can see him. Hmm . . . Nope. Just darkness. That him? No . . . That's just a rock . . . That him? N-

*Fshk*

Gunner?

*Shit, dude. Just shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.*

What? What happened? Do you need backup? An air tank? What?

*Just shut the fuck up and listen! The ship's gonna blow! The reactor core's gone haywire, man, I've only got a minute or so to get in!*

Then get the fuck in!

*What the hell do you think I'm doing?*

Just hurry!

. . .

*Dude, I'm not gonna make it! Just close the doors.*

Uh, no.

*God damn it, I already said I'm not leaving this station! You plan to, not me! So shut the goddam doors and stand back!*

Yeah, that's not gonna ha - what the hell? They're closing!

*Remote access. No point in trying to open the doors, either; I deactivated the control panel.*

What the hell! No! No!

*FWOOM!*

*Audio log terminated*

* * *

><p><strong>Now we're gonna switch to a journal entry real quick-like.<strong>

* * *

><p>Well, in case you couldn't tell, I didn't die. Neither did Gunner, oddly enough. What happened was, as the door was only about five feet away from being fully closed, Gunner came rocketing through it, the reactor's blast not far behind. His little air propellers that worked so well in space absolutely failed when applied to gravity, so he kinda came crashing to the ground, but nothing but bruises came onto him. As for the survivor, he landed on Gunner, which, I imagine, wasn't very pleasant, since the dude was big.<p>

I gotta finish this quickly. The guy (I'll call him Big Dude) has a huge gash in his arm. He regained consciousness when a little synth-blood was put into him, but Gunner informed me that the wound had hit an artery, and if it weren't for his perma-stasis, Big Dude would've died a while ago. No consolation, since the med kits can't fix that. We have to find a full-on medical bay where we can get access to some serious healing technology.

So, it goes like this. In order to get to a medical bay, we need access codes. In order to gain access codes, we need to find and hack a main terminal. In order to find a main terminal, we need to ask the survivor if he knows where one is, since Gunner sure as hell doesn't.

As it worked out, the survivor, a dude called "Titan," knew where a main terminal was, so Gunner went and wrote me out a little hacking program that I can plug into the main terminal to get the access codes we need. So now I have to go on a little journey to kill two birds with one stone: One, to get the codes, and two, to pull up some images on a viable docking bay with a working transport shuttle on it.

Well, Gunner's yelling at me to "GET THE FUCK UP AND START MOVING!" and since he's the better shot of us two, I'd better get going.

* * *

><p><strong>Post-event recap time.<strong>

* * *

><p>I walked for maybe twenty minutes down a few twisty-turny and uncomfortably dark hallways before I came to a glowing-yellow holographic screen floating in mid air over a small black disc embedded in the floor. I didn't encounter a single necromorph on my way there, but I didn't want to push my luck, so I worked quickly.<p>

First, I used my little hacking chip to unlock the terminal. Then, I plugged in Gunner's hacking program. After that, I did exactly what Gunner told me to do (Too complicated a process to waste the time to write it here) and downloaded the necessary access codes and permissions to my RIG. After that was done, I pulled up the security camera monitoring program. I basically just stood there for a half an hour looking at various bays in various locations, my searches widening in ever-broadening camera circles, until I finally had to give up looking and get the hell back to Gunner and Titan before a stray necromorph decided to chop my head off.

So I shut the terminal down and locked it again (Force of habit, I guess; leave everything back the way it was, or arouse suspicion and possibly cause detection) before trekking back to the docking bay we had set up temporary camp in. I returned to Gunner and signaled him with a thumbs-up, and he hefted the half-awake Titan on his shoulder.

"Let's go." He said.

The walk to the medical bay was long, arduous, and rather violent. We encountered a surprisingly concentrated number of necromorphs in the area, almost like they were gathering, but as we walked on, we seemed to leave the area they were "congregating" in and move back into the less-populated portions of The Sprawl.

Finally we arrived, and I used the freshly stolen access codes to unlock the doors.

As we walked in, we hoped the area would be at least relatively safe so we wouldn't have to go into "exterminator" mode, and, fortunately, there were a total of two necromorphs in the room, both Slashers, both strapped to tables. It was an extremely simple matter to kill them.

So I locked the door behind us and Gunner and I hefted Titan up onto a surgical table. I let Gunner take over at this point, setting up the sequences and such, and I kept watch. Gunner was completely absorbed in his work, so I had nobody to talk to, but it wasn't that boring.

At long last Gunner removed the perma-stasis on Titan's arm. Immediately, Titan groaned, jerked once, and passed into the realm of the unconscious as Gunner hit the "Start Procedure" button on the table. Immediately, lasers, needles, and other various unnamable automatronic tools set to work. In an astounding five minutes, it was done, and Titan lay sleeping, recovering mentally from his crash. Gunner and I secured the perimeter better, welding doors and stacking stuff against vents, until the relatively small medical bay became another safe haven for us - even more so than the docking bay, since this one had beds.

"I don't know about you, but I'm ready to sleep for a solid day." I said.

"Me too." Was his reply.

"Should we keep a watch?"

"Screw that." Gunner said dismissively, waving his hand airily at me. "If anything gets through our fortifications, we deserve to die." I laughed at that.

"True enough, my friend, true enough." I said.

And sleep a solid day we did.

We awoke to a gigantic burly Titan hefting two line guns - one in each hand - as though they weighed nothing. One was pointed at my torso, the other at Gunner's.

"What the fuck, Titan?" Gunner shouted. "Put the guns down. Okay? Nice and easy, now."

"Fuck you. Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck is this? You fuckers murderers or some shit? What the fuck!" He waved one of the line guns at a dead necromorph's body before returning to my face.

"No, Titan. We're not murderers. _They _are." I said calmly, pointing at the dead necromorph.

"They criminals or something?" He said.

"No. They were honest citizens - most likely - but they got turned. From human, into necromorph. Which is basically like a space zombie with two really sharp arms coming from its back." Gunner said in his usual tactful way.

"What he means is, the world - The Sprawl - as we know it has vanished, and in its place is an apocalyptic nightmare. The dead walk, and they kill. We don't know why, and we don't care why. We, or I, just want to get the hell off of Titan Station, at least as much as you do." I said to try and cover for Gunner. Titan blinked.

"Space zombies? Apocalypse?" He said.

"Yep."

"I'm supposed to believe this shit? Fuck you both." He tossed the line guns on the ground and walked right out of the med bay, without even saying thank-you.

"Well . . . What should we do now?" Gunner asked.

"We wait. He'll be back as soon as he sees one of them. Speaking of which, did he leave with a weapon?"

"Your plasma cutter."

"Fucker."

"Whatever. He'll be back, just like you said."

We only had to wait twenty minutes before he began pounding on the med bay's door. Gunner checked him out with the door's security camera before opening the door and shutting and locking it as soon as Titan was all the way in.

"You believe us now?" Gunner grinned.

"Fucking . . . dead people . . . with . . . spiky . . . motherfucking . . . arms . . . fuck." Titan managed between breathless gasps.

"Say the word 'fuck' enough?" I asked drily.

"Fuck you, you fucking fuck fucker." Titan said quickly before he resumed gasping and wheezing for breath.

"Evidently not." I muttered. "So, how did you fare out there? Run into anything unpleasant?"

"You know what I ran into. Why the fuck didn't you warn me? You little prick, you could've gotten me killed!" Titan stepped forward, but Gunner interceded.

"You arrogant little . . . Of course we warned you. We tried to tell you, but you didn't listen. You just walked out of here with nothing but a plasma pistol. The only reason we're still here is because we knew you'd be back." He said, pushing Titan back a little bit.

"Well . . . You shouldn't have let me go." Titan said, his voice faltering as he realized that Gunner and Terrance had done no wrong. "Alright, fine. But you still should've . . . Whatever. Fine. Just . . . We need to get the fuck out of here _now_. Understand?"

"What the hell do you think we're trying to do?" Terrance said.

"By the way, why'd the Forrest crash?" Gunner asked, his helmet receding into his RIG. Terrance followed suit, as did Titan. Terrance gasped as he gazed upon Titan's face: A scarred, burnt, beat, broken heap of ugliness. He was tough. No doubt about that. And he'd gone through hell and back, by the looks of it, and was still kicking, so he had to have at least a few vestiges of skill in him.

"The pilots both committed suicide. Yelled something about 'them needing their bodies.' Rest of the crew went haywire after that, since Titan Station's landing-assistance stasis rays weren't activated. We crashed after that." Titan said grimly.

"Why were you out in space?" Terrance asked.

"Patrol run." Titan's reply was concise and sharp.

"Anything . . . eventful happen on your patrol?" Terrance pressed. Titan shook his head.

"Standard run. Out and back. Only five days in length."

"Interesting." Terrance muttered. "So it's decided, then? Our priority is to get the hell off this rock?"

"Hear hear!" Titan roared, thrusting his hand up in the air. Gunner looked at him blankly and began snickering.

* * *

><p><strong>Phew. Glad I got <em>that <em>over with! The next chapter, the stunning finale, should be out within two weeks (There's a lot to it), so keep me on your radar; I'm not dead.**

**Oh, and, about _Immortal_, don't get your hopes up. The first chapter is in the making, don't get me wrong, but it's literally at the very rock bottom of my to-do list, so . . . yeah. Just putting that out there.  
><strong>

**Read, Share, Review, Repeat. Adios.**


	6. Chapter 5 Part 1

**Well, guys, this is the second to last entry in this story. After I do this and the two short follow-up stories, I want you to leave a review saying how much you want, or otherwise, this series to continue (With the trio).**

**Hope this story is good!**

**Oh, and it's journal-entry from for a bit here.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Journal Entry<p>

It's time.

We've planned out our route.

When I was at the main terminal, I looked at, according to Gunner, every single docking bay in Titan Station except three; they're all located on one side of the station in a small location. We're going to a city train station to find a maintenance car that we'll use to get as close to the first bay as possible, and then we'll continue on foot.

This is it. It is the final push. If there isn't an operable shuttle on these three bays, we're stuck on this godforsaken asteroid with only Death to keep us company. But if we can find a ship . . . It's not all been for naught.

So wish us luck. We're here, in the med bay, for one more night of some intense resting before we set off. We've all got maps of The Sprawl downloaded in our RIGs, so we won't be running blindly through Titan Station like Gunner and I were a few days ago.

Well, it's time for me to get some sleep. Just like last time, nobody's keeping watch. Instead, we're just going to trust in our fortifications and the fact that nobody knows we're here, let alone the stupid necromorphs. We'll only be found by chance, and even then we'll have enough time to react if necessary.

Alright. Gunner and Titan are already snoring. I'd better join them if I want to live tomorrow to the end. Good night, and it may be my last.

* * *

><p><strong>Now, 'tis Post-event recap<strong>

* * *

><p>We slept for nine hours straight before Gunner woke us up. We spent maybe ten minutes counting ammo and readying ourselves for the last leg of the race. For whatever reason, we took it a lot more seriously than Gunner and I had previously. Maybe it was the fact that after this, all would be decided, for "good" or for "ill." Or maybe it was just the presence of the grizzled, experienced Titan and his grim professionalism. Whatever the reason, we looked at the door to the medical bay with flat mouths and determination in our eyes. This was it. <em>It<em>. No more after this. Whatever would happen, it would be decided in the next twenty-four hours.

So we all stood and readied our weapons. Gunner unlocked the door, and we waited for it to open. Raising our guns, we peered into the gloomy exterior, tense and ready to fire at any movement seen. There was nothing. Titan took the first step out. For some reason, this was significant. I didn't know why at the time - and I still don't - but I still remember that step clear as day. I guess it must have been symbolic; it showed that we were now gone to our fates. We had embarked, and there was no going back if we wanted to live. We had left the somewhat security of the medical bay and went out into the hallway adjoining the med bay.

"Which way?" Asked Titan. Gunner pointed left, so left we went. After thirty whole minutes of quick walking, we had seen no sign of any necromorphs, train tracks, or stations.

"How long until we reach the station?" I asked. Gunner shrugged.

"Hang on. I'll pull up a map." He hit a few buttons on the control pad on his left wrist before turning back to me. "We still have a solid half-hour to go. But don't worry. I've remotely pulled up some data on our path, and it's relatively undamaged. That means it's had little to no necromorph contact."

"I find that hard to believe." Titan said in a gruff voice. "From what I saw, they left no corner untouched, no person unscathed. At least, not intentionally."

We were all on a common wavelength with our helmets soundproofed, so that we could talk without fear of anything hearing our voices.

"Whatever it is, the data's accurate. Necromorphs haven't been through this area much. Let's not worry about it, though. It's only beneficial to us. We have to go through the area, and if there's nothing there, all the better. We can move a little bit faster." Gunner replied.

As we walked down the hallway through the relatively unscathed section of Titan Station, we all grew silent, looking around. We saw no blood, no claw marks, no bodies. It was well-lit, as neither the solar arrays nor the wires leading to them were damaged by necromorphs. Everything was functioning perfectly. But somehow, it was even scarier than the bloodied and bodied hallways that they had been walking through for the past few days.

"This place is scary as shit." Titan whispered.

"You do realize we don't have to whisper, right?" Gunner said.

"Whatever. It's so . . . empty. It's like none of this happened, but everyone disappeared." Titan said, still whispering.

"Yeah. Let's just keep moving." I said.

We passed through the hallways as quickly as possible, arriving at the station ten minutes faster than expected. There weren't any trains parked at the station, but there was a derailed car close by.

"Finally, there's _some _kind of sign of the necromorphs." Said Titan.

"Finally, you're speaking in an audible tone." Gunner put in. Titan shoved Gunner.

"Alright, guys, this is it. Gunner, where would a maintenance car be located?" I asked.

"In the engineering room. I'll go in. You guys keep watch out here." Gunner replied. Titan and I nodded.

"No problem."

Gunner walked to a locked door and put in a passcode which opened it. He disappeared, the door closing soon after he entered. Suddenly, we heard gunshots.

"Damn it! Gunner, do you read?" I shouted while Titan began futilely pounding on the door. I ran up to it and tried to use my hacking chip to open it, but it was pointless; the software used to keep the door locked was beyond the capabilities of my hacker. I began hitting the door as well. I even tried pumping some plasma into it, but to no avail.

"Damn it!" I shouted again before leaning against the door heavily. Of course, as soon as I did so, it opened and I fell down into the engineering room. Gunner was standing there, his plasma cutter in his hand.

"Hey, guys. Sorry I couldn't talk. The room blocks out communique for some reason. Well, there was a necromorph in there. Lemme tell you, it was a nice change to start shooting at something instead of just walking along like some boring dull idiot on patrol. So, on a more serious note, I managed to get the maintenance car on the rail. It took some hacking and some serious programming, but I did it. If you'll follow me, we can get underway." Gunner said calmly.

"You - What - He - . . . fine." Titan said. We walked into the engineering room and followed Gunner as he took us through a maze of electronics and sensitive equipment. Most of it was beaten to hell by the solitary bored and currently dead necromorph that had inhabited the room.

"Will we be able to get anywhere with all of this crap broken?" I asked.

"Yep. I fixed all the necessary components." Gunner said concisely. "And here we are. Ta-daa!" Gunner pointed at a small doorway that led down a few steps to the train tracks. A small train car with multiple seats, a motor, and a control panel simply sat there waiting to be activated. We piled on. I sat in the front-most seat, while Titan took the rear. Gunner sat in the sideways-facing control seat, the holographic yellow panel floating in front of him.

"Everybody ready?" Gunner asked. Titan and I nodded. "Good. We're going to take this slow, since I need to be able to scan the area in front of us for anything blocking the railway." Gunner touched the screen a few times, and the engine in the back whirred to life. We began moving, slowly at first, but picking up speed as we trundled along.

For the next twenty minutes, we rode at a reasonably fast speed. Suddenly, though, Gunner hit a holographic red button on the control panel and we hissed and squeaked to a stop. I raised my line gun and activated the flashlights on both my helmet and my gun. I peered through the darkness, but couldn't see anything.

"Gunner! What's going on?" Titan roared, raising his guns as well.

"Nothing urgent! There's just a block up ahead. Stay on the car; I'm hacking into the system and turning the emergency lights on now." Gunner began furiously typing away at his little control panel, and before long, the emergency tunnel lights flickered to life. I looked around and saw that the tunnel was made of stone. Evidently we were passing through the older parts of Titan Station. In front of us was a curve in the tunnel, behind nothing but straight-shooting railways for as far as I could see. I couldn't see anything blocking our way between us and the corner, so, of course, we'd have to creep around the corner to see what was happening.

"A quarter of a mile up is our little block. It's around the bend. I'll take us real slow around the corner so we can change our direction really quickly if necessary. Do any of you hear anything?" Gunner said.

"No. My mining RIG has super-sensitive sound devices, but I'm not picking anything up at all. I don't think we're dealing with any living block." I replied. I could hear Titan and Gunner both take deep breaths of relief.

"Thank God. Let's still keep her moving nice and slow, though. Never trust technology with your life if you can help it." Titan said. Gunner hit a few more holographic buttons and we began moving forward at a relatively slow pace, though it would still be difficult to keep up with the car on foot. We came around the corner slowly, and when we were all the way around, we all gasped in shock and horror.

"Ho . . . ly . . . shit." Said Titan. Gunner sank to the ground on his knees, and I simply stared.

In front of us was the biggest train wreck any of us had ever seen.

We began picking our way through the wreckage simply to get past it. There were bodies - hundreds of them - burned, broken, torn, ripped in half, crushed, and anything else you could think of. The odd thing was, though, was that none of the bodies were necromorphs.

We had ditched the maintenance car where we left it in front of the wreck, since there was no way we could get it past the wreckage. We'd simply have to walk, even though Gunner said it would've been another half-hour by train. That meant we'd be forced to walk for a few hours until we reached the other station that was close to the first docking bay, and then even more to the bay itself.

When we reached the end of the wreck, we looked back at it sadly.

"Wonder what happened?" Titan muttered.

"Dunno. There weren't any necromorphs on there. Chances are it was just a regular old accident that happened before this whole mess began. I mean, there weren't any fires or anything, which means they had time to burn out by themselves." Gunner replied.

"Wait. Titan, what did you say about your crash? What did the pilots do?" I asked, a thought striking me like a hammer.

"They said . . . 'They want our bodies.' I don't even know what that means." Titan replied.

"I think I do. Let's walk while we discuss it; we're wasting time." I said. We began moving forward. "Okay. Listen. Did you ever wonder how exactly the first necromorph came to be if there weren't any others around?"

"Never had time to." Gunner said.

"Well, what about this: What if there's some kind of force driving these things? Like a hive mind, you know? And it has the power to turn dead bodies into necromorphs. I mean, even the name is a give-away - _Necromorph._ That means 'To form from a dead body.' It would make sense that the thing could, say, get in your head, make you want to kill yourself, and then take your body and turn it into one of them!" I was really getting into it.

"I like your logic, Terrance," Gunner began. "But . . . well, what about those dead people back at the wreck? If you were right, they'd all be necromorphs right now."

"Oh . . . Yeah. I guess you're right." I thought long and hard about that issue, but came to no conclusion. "Back to the drawing board, I guess."

We walked for hours, encountering absolutely no signs of life anywhere. When we finally reached the station, all of us needed a little rest from walking so much.

"Jeez . . . I'm not meant for this stuff." Titan said as he leaned against a wall in the station itself. His helmet receded into his RIG and he wiped his glistening forehead.

"Titan, you're a marine. You should be able to do this no problem." Said Gunner, who was showing no signs of any fatigue or weakness.  
>"Yeah, well I always focused my attentions on lifting heavy things and putting them back down. Leave running for the scouts. I don't need it." Titan replied heavily.<p>

"Well, look who's right, and look who's wrong." Said Gunner, who had also receded his helmet, grinning. I receded my own helmet as well.

"Okay, guys, let's just take a short breather, and then get this show on the road. Okay?" I said.

"Yeah, yeah, sure." Titan grumbled. "Why can't we just take a nap?"

"You're serious?" I asked. He nodded. "Well, let me just think about that for a second. Let's see . . . So, you want to sleep here," A nod. "in the open," Another nod. "with no protection," No nod this time. "to get your brains ripped out by a necromorph."

"When you put it that way . . ." Titan grumbled. He grumbled a lot.

"Wait, shh!" Gunner held up his hand. "Hear that?"

"Hear what?" I asked.

"I . . . don't know." Gunner strained to hear whatever it was he had heard.

"What are you two talking -" Titan began, but was hushed almost immediately by Gunner and my _Shh!_

"Fine, fine, whatever. Go ahead and listen to whatever you want." Titan muttered.

"Hang on, I'll put on my helmet." I said. I listened with mechanically hypersensitive ears to the noises that Gunner was indicating. My face blanched beneath my helmet, which slowly receded.

"Guys?" I said quietly.

"Yeah?"

"We need to get the fuck out of here and to a transport shuttle, _damn fast_." I whispered.

"Why?" Gunner said, panicked, standing up and raising his weapon. He put his helmet back on as well.

"Because there is a horde - literally, an _army_ - of necromorphs headed our way." I said.

"They don't know we're here, though, do they?" Titan asked.

"They will if we don't _start running now!_" Gunner screamed. We all had our helmets back on by now, and our guns were raised. We began running at a pretty fast pace along the path that Gunner had mapped out to the first docking bay.

We were moving too fast for any talking; if we tried, our breath would vanish and we'd lag back for a few minutes regaining it, so it was a silent run. Titan was lagging behind, but we couldn't afford to slow down, and he was tough. He'd be able to keep the pace.

Of course, Gunner was in the lead by a considerable amount, but I knew I wouldn't fall behind any more.

Once, I looked over my shoulder and Titan was gone, but it was only temporary; he had fallen around a corner, but had soon gotten up and rejoined us in our run.

After a ten minute near-sprint, we reached the first docking bay. Once we were in it, Gunner told us to search for a working shuttle while he began typing frantically into a holographic keyboard that was projected from his RIG. After a few minutes of searching, Gunner finally said, "Yes!" and all the doors to the bay shut and locked.

"Nothing's getting in those babies now." He said. _BANG! _We all stared in shock as a dent appeared in one of the doors.

"You spoke too soon." I said.

"Alright, alright, now let's search this facility and get the hell out!" Gunner nearly screamed. We checked every possible place that a transport shuttle could be, with excessively loud _bang_s still reverberating from the now severely dented door. The holographic yellow circle had long since been destroyed, and the door would only take a few more hits.

"Alright. Nothing operable here." Said Gunner. "Let's go." He typed a few keys, and one of the doors opened. "This way!"

We ran to the door just as the beaten one flew halfway across the bay. Guess who it was? It was Brutsey's twin brother. And he was not happy. He let out a bellowing roar and charged at us with astounding speed. I fired a few line gun shots which injured him and temporarily slowed him down, and as soon as we got past the door and out of the bay Gunner hit another button which closed it.

"That should buy us a few minutes to get a head start on that fucker." Gunner said as the first denting _bang _sounded throughout the halls.

"Why are those things after us?" Titan said breathlessly as they resumed their forced run to the next bay.

"No idea. Come on. Let's not worry about that." I replied.

After ten minutes and several close calls with the brute, we reached the next bay. We concluded that there were no shuttles in that one, either, before taking a temporary stand and blasting one of the beast's legs off. It slowed him down a little, but he still hopped with tremendous speed.

Finally, we hit the last bay. This was it. If there weren't any working shuttles in this bay, we were hosed. We were going to die on Titan Station, and be reborn as one of those necromorph things. Not a very pleasant thought. So we all prayed to whatever gods we believed in and began searching, firing occasional shots at the brute to distract it and try and bring it to its knees.

And that was when things went wrong. We were nearing the far corner, and Gunner saw a shuttle that was intact.

"That's it!" He had shouted. "We're outta here!"

And then the horde arrived. Hundreds, if not thousands, of necromorphs swarmed through various doorways behind us and into the docking bay.

"Shit. RUN!" Titan bellowed, shooting three shots into the crowd. We didn't stick around to see if they made any contact - we were _gone._ We sprinted as fast as we could. Gunner was first, Titan surprisingly second, and, well, me third.

_Ah, well. _Some_body's gotta be last, right?_

I looked over my shoulder. Bad idea. The swarm was twenty feet behind me. I looked again. Even worse idea. Now it was only fifteen. Ten. Five. And then I felt a sharp arm land on my shoulder. I fell. Screamed. Titan and Gunner kept running. Couldn't blame them. I looked up to see a roiling mass of dead, rotten flesh completely cover my vision.

Then I closed my eyes and prepared for a painful death.

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><p><em><strong>Whew.<strong>_** That was good, eh? No? Well, up yours too. I spent a long time working on that one. **

**Actually, I pretty much (Entirely) cranked that out last night. Ah, well. I'm awesome. No getting around it.**

**Read, Share, Review, Repeat. Adios.**

**X-Wolf OUT.**


	7. Chapter 5 Part 2

**Hey, guys, X-Wolf here, here to bring you the thrilling and long-awaited final installment of Dead Space: Trio! Yaay!**

**I'm actually pretty excited that I finally managed to finish the project. My first complete fanfic! Woohoo!**

**That's all I have to say for now. I'll let you get on to reading. Oh, and the whole entire chapter is post-event recap. Just a "JSYK."  
><strong>

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><p>Well, as you may have guessed, I didn't die. Otherwise, how the hell would you be reading this?<p>

Excuse me. I'll just continue on where I left off.

I closed my eyes and prepared for a painful death. But it didn't come. I slowly opened my eyes to see what had happened. Kneeling over me was a necromorph, drooling gore onto the chest piece of my RIG, completely still and silent. It wasn't sinking its long and sharp arms into my chest, it wasn't biting into my head, it wasn't doing anything. Neither were any of the other ones. They were all frozen. I looked at Gunner and Titan, who were equally still.

"Does anybody know what the _fuck _is happening right now?" I screamed at them, my voice breaking multiple times. They both shook their heads frantically.

"You might as well get the hell away from them, though. It couldn't hurt." Gunner said surprisingly calmly. I couldn't have agreed more. I slid myself backwards until I wasn't underneath a bunch of necromorphs anymore and stood shakily to my feet. I hurriedly rejoined Gunner and Titan and we jogged to the shuttle, looking behind us every once in a while to make sure that the necromorphs weren't giving chase. As we came to the bottom of the shuttle, Gunner began typing in some hacking code to open the doors of the shuttle and grant our RIGs full access to it. When he had succeeded, the bottom of the shuttle hissed and swung downward to the floor of the bay, forming a ramp into the depths of the shuttle. As we stepped onto it and it hissed slowly back up, the necromorphs suddenly un-froze and began sprinting out of the bay.

"God damn, that was creepy. What do you think that was for?" I asked.

"I see two distinct possibilities." Said Titan slowly. "And neither of them are good. Possibility one: Something was big enough to scare the necromorphs out of the bay. Possibility two: Something was big enough to call the necromorphs to it. Either way, we're dealing with one bad-ass motherfucker. Let's get off this rock."

"Agreed." I said. "But, Gunner, didn't you say you wanted to stay here?"

"Ah, Terrance. Clearly you don't know me. I was a naive fool all those days ago. In my youth I was when I said that. But I'm a changed man. With a grand total of twenty-thousand credits, you can purchase my services as a pilot." Gunner responded.

"I don't know if that was supposed to be a joke, but it was _not _funny, and we need to leave now, so let's go." Titan said gruffly, walking toward the cockpit. Gunner and I followed hurriedly.

When we had flown from the transport bay and gotten maybe a half a mile from Titan Station, we all looked back at the hell we left behind. We flew away at top speed for another ten minutes, staring ahead into the blackness of space, when suddenly a flash of light appeared behind us. We all turned around and couldn't believe what we were seeing. Smack dab in the middle of The Sprawl an explosion was ensuing that was all-consuming, spreading rapidly throughout the rest of Titan Station.

"What the -" Gunner started.

"- fuck, we know." Titan finished.

"Well, I'm glad we left before _that _happened." I said drily.

"Me too."

We continued soaring through space, alternately discussing where we were going to plot a course for and staring at the still-happening explosion in The Sprawl, which was now the size of a credit chip. Suddenly, something on the dashboard blipped. Gunner looked at it in shock.

"Another ship left The Sprawl!" He shouted excitedly. "We weren't alone after all!"

"What do you know." Titan said uninterestedly.

"This is - Should we try and establish a com-link with them?" Gunner asked loudly.

"No. Let's not do that." I said forcefully. "Let's just keep going. I don't want to get sucked back there again."

"Fine." Gunner said disappointedly. "You're the boss."

"Thank you."

We flew for another half an hour before something phenomenal happened: We received a transmission request.

"Should we?" Gunner asked.

"Yes." Said Titan before I could interject.

"I don't think -" I began.

"Fuck you. Accept it or I will." Titan said quickly.

"Sounds good." Gunner muttered, hitting the "Accept" button on a holographic pad in front of him. A screen appeared on the windshield of the ship, bringing with it the image of a motherly-looking lady.

"Hello! Hello, ship! Do you read?" She said frantically.

"We read! We read!" Gunner said.

"Did you come from Titan Station?" She asked.

"Yes, we did." Titan replied. The woman breathed a sigh of relief.

"More survivors!" She called to some unseen people, who cheered excitedly. "We just found two ships in the span of ten minutes. Maybe there will be more!"

"I seriously doubt it." I muttered under my breath. Thankfully, the woman didn't hear me.

"Alright. I have to ask two questions. Do you know or is there on your ship somebody named 'Isaac Clarke?'" She asked. A small picture appeared on the bottom-right of the screen of a handsome man who looked to be in his forties.

"No. Why?" Gunner asked.

"We believe he is the one who caused the explosion on The Sprawl."

"Good man." Titan said.

"Excuse me?" The woman said angrily.

"I said 'Good Man.' That place needed to go. Do you have any idea what was on there?" Titan replied.

"Millions of innocent people!" The woman said indignantly.

"At one point in time, that was true. But they were transformed. Transformed into these _things_ - Space zombies, you might call them." I said.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The woman said. "All that happened was a terrorist blew the station up, killing millions of innocent women, children, and elderly. The terrorist in question was someone named Isaac Clarke."

"I don't think that's what happened, ma'am. Mainly because we were on the _fucking_ rock for three _fucking_ days with all of those _fucking _things everywhere." Titan said loudly.

"Please keep this civil, sir. Oh, excuse me." The woman said, looking somewhere off-screen. She nodded like she was listening to someone speak. "Please give us your exact coordinates and stay where you are. A ship will come to pick you up and bring you here."

"Why can't we just go to where you are in this ship?" Gunner asked suspiciously.

"Because that ship does not have enough fuel to reach us. We are three days away at top speed without shocking out, and your ship is not equipped with the proper equipment to do so. Don't worry, someone will be there with you within fifteen minutes. Please stay where you are and give us your coordinates."

"Alright, okay." Gunner hit a few buttons on the command screen in front of him and the ship shuddered to a halt. He typed in our coordinates and sent them to the woman.

"We didn't get your name." Said Titan quietly.

"Excuse me?" The woman said.

"We didn't get your name." Titan repeated, louder this time.

"It's Dr. Marks. Dr. Matilda Marks." The woman, Matilda Marks, said.

"Thank you. I'm Titan, that's Gunner, and that's Terrance." Titan said briefly, pointing at who he was naming as he said the name.

"And thank _you_." Said Dr. Marks. "We'll see you soon."

"Sounds good." I said as Gunner terminated the transmission. Suddenly, we all lurched backward as a horrible grinding sound went off from the back of the shuttle.

"Oh, fuck, that didn't sound good!" Titan panicked. Indeed, the command screens were flickering.

"No, you're right, it didn't! I'm checking the bios now." Gunner said quickly as he frantically typed on the emergency physical keyboard. A real screen opened up on the dashboard, and a schematic of the shuttle appeared on it with lots and lots of information all around it. "Something small crashed into the back of our shuttle. It came from Titan Station. It's been 'following' us for miles, on the same trajectory as us, but we were moving faster than it - until now."

"Well, what is it?" I asked.

"It's just debris." Gunner replied. "Hang on, I'm going to make some quick repairs. It'll only take about five minutes, but it's necessary. We're running out of air quickly, here. It breached the hull." Gunner walked to the back of his ship and disappeared. True to his word, he returned five minutes later, but he was holding a large golden chunk of what looked like a mixture of metal and rock. It had some very strange, glowing symbols on it that I couldn't understand.

"Look what I found, John!" Said Gunner in a strange voice.

"Gunner? Who is John?" Titan said nervously. Gunner didn't seem to hear. His helmet receded into his RIG.

"I found a rock, John, I found a rock!"

"Something's wrong. Look at his eyes." I said, raising my line gun nervously.

"Don't shoot!" Titan hissed, though he raised a pair of plasma cutters as well.

"You want me to what?" Gunner said, a strange look crossing his eyes. "Okay, if you say so, John." Gunner raised his plasma cutter and pointed it directly at Titan, who began shouting not to shoot. Gunner couldn't hear him, though. I made some quick calculations in my head and deduced that the first shot would not penetrate Titan's RIG, but my line gun blast would cut immediately through Gunner's. If Gunner shot, I would kill him. I told Titan this, but it didn't seem to allay his fear at all.

"Wait a second, John . . . Didn't you die?" Gunner said, his face twisting. He began to shake violently, the plasma cutter dropping from his hand, sweat pouring in rivulets from his face. "Yes you did, John! I saw it! John, no! No, John, no! Put the gun down!" But it had been Gunner who had picked up the plasma cutter and pointed it as his own neck. "John, no!" Gunner began pushing his arm away from himself, managing to push the gun so that if it fired it would not hit him. Just in time, too, as three blasts fired from the gun, missing and hitting the wall behind Gunner.

"Help him!" Screamed Titan, wrenching the plasma cutter from Gunner's hand and hurling it across the floor.

"The rock!" I yelled, understanding. I grabbed the rock and hauled it from Gunner's extremely reluctant grasp. Suddenly, everything froze. I looked around in wonder. I heard voices echoing from my head - they sounded vaguely like Titan's and Gunner's, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. Besides, they were both frozen. I walked around the cockpit of the ship, suddenly seeing something strange. It was glowing orange, under one of the pilot's seats. Confused, I took a closer look. It was a glowing symbol - one of the ones that was on the strange rock Gunner found. The strange rock! Where'd it go? It was gone. I looked around for it, but it was nowhere in sight. I returned my attention to the glowing symbol under the seat. It looked so big and open, but it was only one glyph in the floor. But it did look so big and open. So big . . . and open . . . I leaned toward it, and suddenly fell into it. I fell through orange light - falling, falling, falling - and then suddenly I was back in the cockpit of the shuttle, the strange rock on the ground at my feet, Gunner and Titan standing by me, panting heavily.

"What happened?" I asked.

"The rock . . . it . . . takes over your mind bleaaaaargh!" Gunner said, but suddenly two long, thin arms that ended in razor-sharp bones erupted from his shoulders and his helmet exploded off of his face, revealing the mutilated head of a necromorph.

I awoke hours later in a soft white bed, RIGless and confused. I had an IV attached to me, and some kind of equipment wrapped around my head. Titan, RIGless as well, was sitting by me in a small chair. Gunner was on his other side.

"Be careful!" I shouted. "Gunner's a -"

"No, he's not. It was all in your head. That rock did it to you. It messes with people's minds." Titan said soothingly.

"What? The rock?" Suddenly it all came back to me. The rock, Gunner acting weirdly, then my grabbing it . . . and then the vision. It came back so vividly I wondered if it weren't happening again. After coming to terms with the fact that I was, indeed, in reality, I began talking to Titan about what had happened after I blacked out. As it happened, I collapsed, dropping the rock, and Gunner told Titan not to touch it. They waited for a few minutes until a large transport ship shocked in a few miles away from our little shuttle. Gunner opened the hatch and told Titan to kick the rock out of our shuttle, touching it as little as possible. After they did that, they flew to the ship and docked within it, where they were shocked back to a place called Rhea Station, which was on the other side of Saturn on the still-intact moon Rhea. There, we had all gotten emergency physical treatment, and after that, Gunner and I got sent to the mental ward to be placed under the care of neuroscientist Dr. James Lough, who diagnosed us with post-traumatic shock. We had received proper treatment and were expected to fully recover soon.

"That's it?" I asked Titan after he was done. Titan nodded. "Has Gunner been awake yet?"

"No. His condition was much worse than yours. Apparently, the rock made him see his little brother who died when he was five. It was a pretty stressful experience for him." Titan said. I looked around the room again to see that it was relatively small. It was all light blue, and the floor was heavily carpeted. The roof had holographic clouds floating across it. All in all, it was a very peaceful, calming, and relaxing room. There was a door and two fake windows. The windows showed a grassy meadow with abundant flowers, all swaying in a gentle breeze. The door was light blue as well.

The door hissed open, then, and I saw a man in a white long jacket - wearing white everything from pants to undershirt - walk in. A small name tag on the left side of his chest identified him as Dr. Lough.

"Hello, there, Titan. I see that Terrance is awake. How are you, Terrance?" Dr. Lough said. His voice was very light and pleasing, and he spoke in a calm and bolstering voice.

"I'm fine. When will Gunner be up again?"

"It shouldn't be too long. Maybe in the next day or so? Now, Terrance, I need to talk to you. Alone. Titan, if you would wait outside?" Dr. Lough said. Titan left the room. "Good. Now, I need you to recount exactly what happened after you touched the Marker fragment."

"The what?" By that point, I was very confused.

"The Marker fragment. The black thing you had?" Dr. Lough said. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone about it. I am a Unitologist, and the Marker is the center of my religion. There was a Marker on Titan Station. It gives visions to people. There, however, _is _an anti-Unitology group out there, and they did not want the Convergence to occur. So they destroyed the Marker. You and Gunner . . . You have messages that the Marker left for me to find. I need to decipher it, so that I can pass it on to the rest of my people."

"The . . . Marker? You mean the golden rock?" I asked. Dr. Lough nodded. So I recounted to him my entire vision, front to back, in great detail. When I finished, Dr. Lough left, and Titan came back in.

"So, what will we do when Gunner wakes up? We need a plan." I said.

"I agree. I think that we should get new RIGs, stock up on supplies, buy a shock-worthy ship, and then . . . I don't know." Titan said.

"But wait . . . I do. I'll request a council with the C.E.O of the United Miners' Association and tell him about what happened. He might be able to help us out." I said excitedly.

"Perfect. At least it's something else to strive for." Titan replied.

"Now all we have to do is buy the stuff and wait for Gunner to wake up."

"I'll go out and get what we need. You should rest while you still can. You certainly took a beating in the last few days." Titan said, walking out of the room once more.

Three days later, Gunner was up and about once more. We made to check out of the hospital building we were in, but when we tried, three security officers came up to us.

"Sorry, but we can't let you out." They said. They wore security RIGs, and had a divet each.

"Sorry, but that's not up to you." Titan growled menacingly. "You let us out now, or we'll be forced to get violent."

"We can't let you out." One of the security officers repeated.

"Okay." Titan and Gunner stepped forward. "We've got training for this, Terrance. You stay back." The two then went into action. Titan first grabbed one of the guard's divets, shot the guard in the head, and put three rounds into another one with its secondary firing mode, which shoots three-round bursts. Gunner, however, had a bit more difficulty: The officer _he _went after had already grabbed his divet. Gunner dove under a soaring lead bullet that sank into the ground beside my foot and grabbed the officer's wrist, who began pulling the trigger randomly. Gunner twisted and flipped the officer over his shoulder, and began slamming the officer's hand on the ground repeatedly until the divet came free. Gunner then put two rounds in the officer's heart and one in his head, typic sure-kill style.

"Let's move." Said Gunner, tossing me the third divet.

"Was that necessary, guys?" I said as we sprinted to the hospital's elevator.

"They were looking for trouble." Said Gunner as the elevator doors closed. Gunner removed the control panel, rewired a few things, and touched two wires together. The elevator began moving upward quickly.

"What did you do?" Titan asked.

"I overrode the authorization requirement to get to the roof." He replied. A few seconds later, the doors hissed open once more, and we were on the triangular hospital building's roof. There were two security officers guarding a small transport helicopter. Gunner sank a slug into one of the officer's chest, while Titan motioned for me to get the other one while he watched our backs. It took me three shots, but I finally managed to bring the second one down.

"Let's move." Said Gunner as we sprinted to the helicopter, which had two rotors: One on each side of the thing, like an Osprey. Gunner hopped into the cockpit of the white-with-red-crosses helicopter while Titan and I got in the back of it. Gunner piloted us expertly to a small mini-mall on the outskirts of Rhea Station. We weren't on the public wanted list yet, so we quickly got our RIGs and weaponry. Feeling a lot better and more secure then, we took the helicopter to the shipyard. Gunner purchased the ship while Titan and I watched carefully, weapons at the ready, for any signs of trouble. When Gunner had successfully negotiated the price, we hopped onto the standard transport ship we had just purchased and high-tailed it away from Rhea Station as fast as possible. I looked back at the shrinking moon Rhea and reflected on what the hell had just happened to me.

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><p><strong>Alright! Way to bring a series to a conclusion, right?<strong>

**Now, most of you are currently sobbing hysterically because Dead Space: Trio is over and done with. Well, don't be. I've already written a small short story to bridge the gap between this series and the next (And probably last) that involves the trio. I wrote it on my iPod, though, and I can't find it as of the instant I'm typing this. Ah, well. It'll turn up in a few days . . . I hope . . . So look forward to that.**

**Fun fact: Dead Space: Trio was originally to be named as Dead Space: Survivor.**

**Aaand . . . That's it. See y'all later. Hope you liked the series and how I ended it.**

**Read, Share, Review, Repeat. Adios! X-Wolf out!**

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><p><strong><em>Hey, guys! Check out<em> _"Dead Space Trio: The First Four Days"_ _by Rafen of the Blood, which tells the story of Terrance's first four days on Titan Sation. __Go ahead, read it. I dare you. Although . . . I haven't read it yet . . . Just kidding. I'm sure it'll be fine._  
><strong>


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